TRIAD OF PRIMARY INSTINCTS…
- The drive for distinction and power
- The drive for security — physical, financial, emotional and spiritual
- The desire to love and be loved…
All of all this has come to pass in my life. It is a tradeoff for the loss of youth. The joy of contentment has come with age. It actually is a surprise, to love and be loved. To have everything I want and need, and enough to share. To not be a kid anymore, playing circle games. In the hands of a powerful adult, circle games are just lovely. Round and round with the painting and the writing. Round and round with the cooking and the cleaning. Round and round with the crazy wisdom samplers and armfuls of books yet to be read… And go round and round in sickness and in health…
“THE ONLY QUESTIONS THAT REALLY MATTER ARE THE ONES YOU ASK YOURSELF.” — Ursula K. LeGuin
AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH…
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk — when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act — then a nation finds itself at risk. Culture death is a clear possibility.” — Neil Postman
THE JOYS AND LOOP-DE-LOOP OF TRAVEL…
“Ever since St. Brendan set out in his leather boat to find America, the Irish have been wanderers.
“It is not a comfortable calling, wandering.
“The suitcase, the airport, the lines, the hazards, the adjustments of body and mind — all these draw deep on reserves of patience and flexibility, and sometimes exhaust them. Sitting under a cafe umbrella in a piazza, we proclaim the glory of the world. We endure dislocation to arrive at the conditioned richness that only travel provides.
“And this IS a richness, both sensual and intellectual, which grows in savor as we grow older. At last there is time and money and skill and self-knowledge with which to shape the journey.
“However luxuriously done, or however crudely touristic, travel is always about creativity. It celebrates our ability to feel and see and think in new ways — to open ourselves to the surprising world.” — Nuala O’faolin
THE X CLASS ARISTOCRACY…
“I believe in aristocracy… Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate the plucky… They represent the true human condition — the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos…
“On they go, an invincible army, yet not a victorious one… All attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the… Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone.
“When the door is shut, they are no longer in the room. Their temple… is the holiness of the heart’s imagination. And their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world…” — E.M. Forster
LOVE IS ALL THERE IS…
“Love is at the center… Remember the way they loved each other and the way they loved you. Think about how many kinds of love there are. You can’t have back what you had before. None of that is coming back. It will not be the same again. But it is not just butterflies and snowflakes and waves and stars that are different from each other no matter how many of them there are.
“Loving and being loved come in infinite shapes and patterns. Who know what it will look like next time? Remember that.” — Best Love, Rosie
“If you do your human work, beings seen and unseen will help you.” — Natalie Goldberg
YOUR GOOD CAN’T HELP BUT FIND YOU…
My friend Jane came at the beginning of Semana Santa and what a high time and general whoop-te-do we had. She swam in the ocean (I am afraid of it) and frollicked in the waves. The umbrella man, Malecio, showed up to rent us a faded blue beach umbrella. The big blue umbrella stuck 8″ deep in the soft wet sand soothed my anxiety that I might scald myself to a lobster finish in the hot sun. Funny that I live in a beach community where I equally avoid both the sun and the sea. Well, I know the sun and the sea are there if I want them.
Yesterday we went to Boca de Tomatlan. Boca is about twenty minutes away on the orange and white bus. Orange and white, the color of creamsicles. The colors and tastes of summer — we have them year round. Red bougainvilla, all colors. Palm trees. Pink and orange hibiscus. Bright red orange tulip trees. Yellow blossom primavera trees. Birds of paradise…
We walk down from the bus stop at the side of the two-lane highway into what was once a little fishing village and a quiet beach. The beach is pretty much gone. ·Washed away by storms, I imagine. Where once you crossed the cobblestone lanes and walked down stone steps to the beach is now a gusty river rolling into the ocean. What beach is left is pretty small, pretty sad. We walked around to the end of a long parking lot, past two donkeys tied to a tree, and had a bit of a hike to end up on what turned out to be a rather sweet little yellow sand green and turquoise water cove.
I took photos of chickens and roosters and bananas growing on banana trees. The river looked quite paintable, so I took photos of the river, too, including horses off in the distance. We shall see which of the photos turn out, and turn out to paintable paint reference.
We rented a table from Maria and spent a few lovely hours at the sweet little beach. This is what I mean by your good can’t help but find you. We didn’t know there would be donkeys and banana trees and a table with an umbrella and two boys with rice pudding for 15 pesos. With peace and acceptance and joy wherever we are and whatever we are doing, it just didn’t matter that the main beach was gone and Boca is but a memory captured in photo reference from five years ago.
We had all the fun it is possible to have, and now Jane is flying back home. And I am here. Jane’s visit was my good. Next my good is to go home and stay there until Semana Santa is over. That’s what anyone with any sense does while this town is crazy in love with Easter and Jesus and is throwing out wingdings left right and fiesta center. No reinvention necessary. Which is good, because I have no energy to spend swimming up river from the throngs.
Think new thoughts. Make new karma. Love is all there is. Let us be love, and be love.
Out of the Armchair 